What impact will the building of a high-speed train between Anaheim and Las Vegas have economically.Find out! That’s the commercial message posted here in the interest of throwing raw meat to wild animals.

U.S. High Speed Rail Association President Andy Kunz on the possibility of a nation-wide high speed rail system. FOX is remarkable fair, although they do all hang on to that old “northeast corridor is profitable myth.” My theory is that this item got past the censors because the truck and airline lobbyists have not expressed their wishes to FOX management. Nonetheless, Look for Cato’s paid assassin to appear shortly. THANK YOU FOX NEWS.

Some notes. Florida is in no way prepared for HSR.

High performance rail, trains operating up to 110 mph., may be all that would be necessary on some corridors. The upgrades would assure 90% on time performance. Major improvement. High performance rail is MUCH cheaper to construct than true European-style HSR.

And the whole bunch of ‘em could have left the Amtrak whipping boy alone. That gets mighty old after a while. What other government function gets the kind of intense scrutiny and micro-management as Amtrak? (not ignoring the obvious problems)

Conservative lawmakers love to bemoan the federal government’s stake in Amtrak as the quintessential icon for big-government waste. However, they have no qualms about using this authority over the company to make it adjust its policies to comply with their impractical political whims. Case in point: a recent amendment to the budget bill for the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development requiring Amtrak revoke its post-9/11, post-Madrid bombing ban on guns in checked luggage. The reasoning? Well, if you can have a gun in your checked airline baggage, why not on Amtrak as well? The New York Times has the obvious answer:

Amtrak has none of the hermetic procedures where airport passengers are screened shoeless at detectors while their checked baggage is separately secured. Trains stop at stations and passengers come and go. Amtrak presently has a system of checking passengers and screening baggage at random, much the way New York police monitor mass transit.

And lessened security isn’t the only reason reason train riders should be concerned:

The budget cudgel was approved despite pleas from Amtrak that it lacks the manpower, equipment and extra financing to effectively meet the deadline and that it faces a shutdown if federal funds are lost. Among other changes, baggage cars would have to be securely retrofitted and manpower increased. The warning cut no ice with the majority as the chief sponsor, Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican of Mississippi, intoned a lock-step mantra: “Americans should not have their Second Amendment rights restricted for any reason.”

Gotta love those unfunded mandates. TFA will keep an eye on this issue. Hopefully this is the kind of nonsense that gets shaken out during conference committee.

TransportPolitic has a major piece on the French railway’s keen interest in developing America’ s high speed corridors. This is a lengthy and detailed story, rich in details and contains a map. California, Midwest, Texas and California routes included. This is still more talk, but the talking is coming from a real player.

I’ve obtained documents that show that SNCF, the French national railroad operator made famous by its development of the TGV system, has responded with detailed descriptions of potential operations in four U.S. corridors, all to benefit from train service at speeds of up to 220 mph. The organization refers to this service as HST 220 (220 mph high-speed trains). With the exception of a description of plans by the California High-Speed Rail Authority, SNCF appears to be the only group that submitted a serious, corridor-based response to FRA’s demand, though infrastructure companies Vinci, Spineq, Cintra, Global Via, and Bouygues all sent in letters promoting rather vague interest in involvement.

There is no funding associated with this call for expressions of interest; it is unrelated to the stimulus. Nonetheless, SNCF’s large response — totaling more than 1,000 pages — exemplifies the degree to which it sees American corridors as a good investment and suggests that the French company is planning an all-out assault on future U.S. rail operations.

With a rail line that already exists, a unified coalition of businesses, educational institutions and local citizens alike, Winona is a model for maximizing the potential of investment in High Speed Rail.